1. FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates to offshore construction and repair work such as for example, the work which takes place on underwater pipelines, risers, oil and gas drillng operations and the platforms from which such operations are conducted. More specifically, the invention pertains to the economic use of unmanned hulls which reside in multitudinous numbers around the world in the form of sporadic or infrequently used unmanned barges.
2. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE PRIOR ART
The offshore gas and oil exploration and drilling industry is known to be historically cyclical over years, and, in addition, seasonal. Moreover, the pursuit of oil and gas reserves, offshore particularly, is notoriously expensive because of the need to transport equipment on floating vessels and to carry out all exploration and petroleum retrieval operations from the deck of such vessels or from the deck of platforms build adjacent such vessels. Thus the cost of petroleum retrieval offshore are not only expensive but the success is unpredictable, and the frequency of work sporadic. Under such circumstances, it is readily apparent that the acquisition of equipment is risky since there is little predetermined confidence that the equipment will be continuously employed over the period of time necessary to amortise the investment therein. One such piece of equipment characterized by substantial, if not the most substantial investment in offshore oil and gas operations, is the service barge itself. Construction and service barges typically are among the largest pieces of equipment used in offshore construction work. These barges exist in a range of THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY (350) ft. in length and cost upward of FOUR to FIVE MILLION DOLLARS ($4,000,000.00 to $5,000,000. 00). Therefore, cyclical drilling and/or offshore maintenance operations expose owners of offshore diving and construction barges to substantial risk of financial loss.
In recent years, efforts have been made to develop faster methods of construction ships and vessels of all types thus reducing the time and related cost of constuction. Although assembly-line ship building methods have been developed where separate sections of the ship are prefabricated and assembled, such as for example, as shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,368,441 and 3,011,252, there is insufficient savings to nevertheless fabricate barge hulls having the necessary internal bracing and structural integrity at a cost effectively within the rate of return barge owner-operators require in cyclical usage.